Vocabularies.  The collection of words a person can command either in use or understanding is a vocabulary.  Every person has three distinct ones:  his reading vocabulary, his writing vocabulary, his speaking vocabulary.  Of these, the reading vocabulary is the largest.  There are thousands of words he recognizes in reading and although he might not be able to construct a dictionary definition for everyone, he has a sufficiently clear idea to grasp the meaning.  In this rude approximation to sense he is aided by the context, but for all practical purposes he understands the word.  If he were writing, carefully taking time to note exactly what he was expressing, he might recall that word and so consciously put it into a sentence.  He might use it in exactly the same sense in which he had seen it in print.  But never in the rush of ideas and words in spoken discourse would he risk using a word he knew so slightly.  If nothing more, he would beware of mispronunciation.

Thus a person could easily deduce from his reading that a hangar is a building to house airplanes.  He might—­to avoid repeating the word shed too frequently—­use it in writing.  But until he was absolutely certain of its significance and its sound he would hardly venture to say it to other men.

Spoken discourse is so alive, it moves so rapidly, that it is never so precise, so varied in its choice of words, as written material.  The phraseology of written discourse sounds slightly or markedly stilted, bookish, if repeated by the tongue.  This difference—­though it may appear almost trifling—­is apparent to everyone.  Its recognition can be partly illustrated by the fact that after President Lowell and Senator Lodge had debated on the topic, the League of Nations, in Boston and were shown the reports of their speeches, each made changes in certain expressions.  The version for print and reading is a little more formal than the delivered sentences.  The Senator said, “I want” but preferred to write “I wish”; then he changed “has got to be” into “must,” and “nothing to see” into “nothing visible.”

One might say that all three vocabularies should correspond, but there is no real need of this.  So long as people read they will meet thousands of words for which they have no need in speaking.  Everybody must be able to understand the masterpieces of the past with their archaic (old-fashioned) words like eftsoons or halidom, but no one need use such expressions now.  So there is no discredit in the fact that one’s speaking vocabulary is more restricted than his reading vocabulary.